People and Conservation - new cards & studies

Question 1

Give some findings from the M———s et al. 2— study around urbanisation

Answer 1

Macdonald’s et al
2008 - 8% of IUCN red-listed species primarily threatened by urbanisation
- ecoregions of high biodiversity importance are being urbanised
- some species already extinct from it
- with urbanisation massively increasing, mean distance of a protected area to a city is decreasing (ie. in cape town)

Question 2

Studies of UK urbanisation show species, including urban indicator species, to show a unimodal peak in numbers when plotted against housing density. Why is this? What is a problem here

Answer 2

Urban environments can often be more ecolgocially complex than our much depleted rural ones. Problematically UK legislation plans to build houses at these densities in which numbers are declining

Question 3

There may be new and strong selective pressure on species in urban areas. C—— et al. —- showed less seeds of a species germinated in an urban area, and thus selection was acting on this species over a relatively small number of generations

Answer 3

Cheptou et al. 2008

Question 4

What may happen to clutch size in urban areas? what may stop this from happening?

Answer 4

It may decrease. Supplementary feeding (bird-feeding) may stop this, if it can compensate for the natural food sources unavailable in urban areas.

Question 5

Crop yields of major crops like soy, wheat and maize could be reduced due to CC. Cite the study.

Answer 5

Lobell et al. 2020

Question 6

G—— et al. 20– finds that a —– of all food worldwide is wasted, especially in Western countries

Answer 6

Godfray et al. 2020 - a third of all food worldwide is wasted

Question 7

Around –% of urban expansion is expected to happen into cropland, reducing global crop yields by a small but significant percentage (1-4%) and agricultural expansion is generally happening in areas of h— importance for b——- such as SE Asia and Brazil

Answer 7

50%, high importance for biodiversity

Question 8

Globally, we adquire –% of NPP, higher in Western countries

Answer 8

30% (Imhoff et al. 2004)

Question 9

T/F area used to grow annual and perennial plants is expanding

Answer 9

TRUE, even in the tropics

Question 10

Agriculture is the biggest threat to b— numbers and threatened species globally, and the biggest threat to –% of threatened v——–

Answer 10

bird, 80%, vertebrates

Question 11

European bird populations show negative correlation with increased c—- y—-

Answer 11

Cereal yields

Question 12

K—– et al. 2—- - Only organic farms NEAR natural areas had enough pollination by bees to produce marketable m—–, due to natural areas providing abundant and varied bee species

Answer 12

Kremen et al. 2001

Question 13

What bird species has benefited from UK compensation schemes for more environmental farming?

Answer 13

The cirl bunting, which needs stubble to feed on in winter and mixed grasslands paired with ripening cereals in the summer. These fell as farmland polarization increased, but are on the rise again.

Question 14

P—— et al. —– - Expanding PAs to 17% could greatly increase coverage of species range, but this would be reduced by projections of conflicting land use pressures. Calls for more global cooperation across countries

Answer 14

Pouzols et al. 2014

Question 15

What is the PA coverage target by 2030? and 2050?

Answer 15

30% by 2030 for land and sea, and also discussion about 50% by 2050, for land and sea.

Question 16

Is there enough valuable land left to protect with PAs? What proportion of ecoregions are already imperilled?

Answer 16

24% of ecoregions already imperilled. Some are well protected though (12%) and some could still reach the target with work (37%) - Dinerstein et al. 2017

Question 17

There is a SIGNIFICANT trade-off between PAs and c——- loss. This does better under a land-s—— initiative, but as we know, this may not be better for nature

Answer 17

calorie, land-sharing (Mehrabi et al. 2018)

Question 18

Give a statistic of size being a problem with PAs

Answer 18

more than 50% are less than 10km squared in size

Question 19

what percentage of protected areas are well protected? What percentage of terrestrial ecosystems are protected?

Answer 19

only 10% :(( 16% protected

Question 20

why is there an INCREASE in proportional protection across species in PAs and why is this not necessarily great?

Answer 20

Sooo everywhere around the PAs is just degrading so species move more into these PAs overtime, although PA expansion does contribute a little to this. Even this finding shows that PAs can help slow extinction rates

Question 21

The aral sea is –% of it’s former area. It has higher s—–, way less fish d—– and problems with t—– d—- clouds causing high infant mortality, twice that of the surrounding regions. The fishing industry is gone. Reduced i—— and r—— improvements are slightly combating it. It goes to show that c—— ecosystems cannot usually be f—– restored

Answer 21

10, salinity, diversity, toxic dust clouds, irrigation, river, collapsed, fully

Question 22

Give an example of assisted migration / reintroduction

Answer 22

The swamp tortoise to wetlands in Australia it has been absent from

Question 23

The reintroduction of the common crane and the capercallie are examples of what problem with reintroduction in the UK?

Answer 23

The controversy that time and effort and money may be put into reintroduce species which are of least concern on a global scale. The Californian condor introductions also cost 2 MILLION but birds still being poisoned by lead.

Question 24

How many species reintroductions are classed as successful according to the IUCN?

Answer 24

38%. Only 3.5% classed as failure. 64% are classed as being either successful or highly successful ( a smaller percentage). Good

Question 25

A study on Swiss plants and birds showed that only 4% of conservation efforts were successful. Why may this have been? 3 main reasons

Answer 25

• Insufficient funds from government / corporations
• Individual choices
• Non-compliance such as illegal logging
• Repealed legislation like under Donald Trump / Bolsonaro

Question 26

Describe how Coldwell & Evans 2017 tried to quantify levels of conservation support

Answer 26

Knocked on peoples doors and:
- Asked them to say what issues they’d give donations to hypothetically. This was compared with actual donations given. For actual and hypothetical, environment ranked below vulnerable people and medical research
- Asked them to rank commitment to environmental sustainability (CESS) on 1-12 scale
Only 16% scored 11 or more, but was a wide range

Question 27

B—– et al. —- tested contextual methods and found nudging behaviour to be generally quite effective. Suggested that combining f—— and c—— methods could be the most effective. Financial generally outperformed e——-

Answer 27

Byerly et al. 2017. Financial & Contextual. Educational

Question 28

What is the principle of co-design? Give an example

Answer 28

To work with local people and knowledge in conservation projects to obtain workable solutions.
Example: Reducing by-catch of albatross / seabirds from fisheries with weighted lines, tori lines and night-fishing in South Africa. Reduced by-catch by 99%. Locals didn’t want to be catching these birds anyways.

Question 29

Give an example of a CBNRM working?

Answer 29

With the Maasai in Kenya. Getting them to track lions for money instead of kill them. They also got to find lost cattle, and lost children via doing this, and people doing this gained reputability in the community by being literate. Did increase predations, but also scientific knowledge on the number and distribution of lions.

Question 30

What factors can commonly make CBNRM not work? Give an example of CBNRM not working?

Answer 30

Human migration, environmental degradation and land being bought up by mining companies, conflicting goals etc.
An example of it not working is in Annapurna. Initially set up school for locals and discouraged them from taking too much firewood which harmed pheasant populations.
Then a road was built to Kathmandu
Locals found alternative education, and also started picking rare fungus to transport for Chinese medicine and make more money.
This scheme should have had Horizon-scanning and constant evaluation to prevent this.

Question 31

Is punishment effective. How much higher do some fines need to be, ie. For the wildlife trade?

Answer 31

No. can be seen as ‘permit to misbehave’. Fines may not be high enough such as in Southern Amazon rainforest. For wildlife trade, found to need to be 10-100 times higher to be effective

Question 32

What are some problems with using ecosystem services to get people to support conservation? Cite the studies which investigated this

Answer 32

Naidoo et al. 2008 showed that ecosystem services don’t necessarily correlate with high biodiversity areas.
For the general public, Goff et al. 2017 found that they were less attracted to this idea, maybe as they felt like the companies it concerned should pay and not them.

Question 33

Give an example of ecosystem services working as a method of attracting companies to conservation efforts.

Answer 33

United utilities restoring peatlands effectively to improve their water quality. Has helped with bird pops, CC, and restoring peatland.

Question 34

G—— et al. —- showed that framing conservation as ES could attract 4 times as much funding by generating 3 times as much corporate interest.

Answer 34

Goldman et al. 2004

Question 35

A considerable amount (–%) of globally threatened bird species are impacted by housing and urban areas `

Answer 35

12%

Question 36

Give the key takeaways from this paper (3) :
The Implications of current and future urbanization for global protected areas and Biodiversity conservation

Answer 36

Key takeaways:
Analyses show 8% of red list vertebrates to be primarily at risk from urbanization
Distance between PA and cities projected to decrease
PAs most likely to be encroached upon from low/moderate income countries, thus with a potentially lower capacity to deal with their new impact on imperrilled ecoregions

Question 37

Conservation conflicts across Africa
What correlation is found across Africa?
Why is this a big big challenge?

Answer 37

Correlation between human population density and species richness of various taxa (birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians) including threatened and endemic species. Thus, conflicts within conservation cannot be easily avoided, as many densely inhabited areas are the ones containing endemic species :(

Question 38

Houses and habitat loss paper
Looks at USA housing development using aerial photographs
What type of development is minimizing habitat loss? What habitats are still being developed on?

Answer 38

Shows that on the plus, housing clustering can minimize habitat loss
On the con, whilst developments may avoid being made in wetlands, woodlands still at risk, as are other high biodiversity areas such as lakesides
Development must be steered away from high biodiversity areas and promote clustered housing development

Question 39

urban areas in uk shown to contain more/less specialist bird species

Answer 39

Less. Urbanisation promotes biotic homogenization, wherin species assemblages in different locations are very similar to one another

Question 40

Urban areas shown to change s—– p——- on species, for example across various p—- species and avian c—– size

Answer 40

selective pressure, plants, clutch

Question 41

there is a proven correlation between c——— gr—- s—– and reduced likelihood of developing a p——– d——- with adulthood

Answer 41

Childhood green space, physchiatric disorder

Question 42

What does the pigeon paradox paper discuss?
What actions does it propose are taken (3)?

Answer 42

Conservation needs more political and financial support
This could be garnered by more people sensing a connection with nature, especially in childhood.
Because of this, the actions of restoring urban nature, taking care with how ‘pest’ species are perceived and improved access to urban nature are promoted. This must be done in a way which avoids inequalities in the disrributions of these green spaces, as has been done in the past

Question 43

A study of L——– demonstrated the importance of urban trees. They could store 30,000 times more carbon.

Answer 43

Leicester

Question 44

E——– AND i——— agriculture has increased

Answer 44

Extensive, intensive

Question 45

explain how commodity training on the global market can lead to food insecurity

Answer 45

Price Volatility: Unpredictable fluctuations in food prices, making it difficult for vulnerable populations to afford basic food items.

Speculation: Excessive speculation in the commodities market can contribute to price bubbles, exacerbating food price volatility and impacting consumers.

Export Restrictions: Some countries imposing export restrictions during crises can reduce the availability of food on the international market, contributing to global shortages.

Dependency on Global Markets: Nations heavily relying on global markets for food may face challenges in securing an adequate food supply during disruptions.

Inequitable Distribution: Global commodity trading may not prioritize equitable distribution, leading to challenges for marginalized regions in accessing food resources.

Impact on Smallholder Farmers: The structure of global markets may disadvantage smallholder farmers, reducing productivity and contributing to local food insecurity.

Question 46

Global patterns in human consumption of net primary production
How does NPP vary globally? What does it often correlate with, and what could somewhat mitigate it’s impact?

Answer 46

NPP appropriated by humans varies massively worldwide
Understanding this can help us understand human impacts on ecosystems
This study looks at global human appropriation of terrestrial net primary production
Globally, finds that humans appropriate approximately 20% of terrestrial NPP, with low and high estimates of 14 and 26%, respectively - BIG VARIANCE
Population density and affluence of the population influence this map massively
Further appropriation of NPP could severely affect ecosystem services. Improving efficiency could help mitigate this

Question 47

— intensity farming IS essential to atleast – globally endangered bird species

Answer 47

Low,30

Question 48

“Decoupling of deforestation and soy production in the southern Amazon during the late 2000s”
Can intensification stop deforestation?

Answer 48

In soy production, results show that increased intensification can reduce deforestation, thus policies should promote intensification.
Policies MAY be insufficient to contain deforestation if another boom is favoured in the future however.

Question 49

“The agroecological matrix as alternative to the land-sparing/agriculture intensification model”
Explain how land-sparing models and assumptions do NOT always lead to the best outcomes for biodiversity and people.

Answer 49

Unproven assumption: Land sparing can assume that a reduction in rural population can reduce deforestation. However, empirical evidence shows this not to be the case in several tropical areas. The Forest Transition Model can assume that a reduced rural population better for both food production AND biodiversity, but this is not found to be the case in many localities, instead showing a small-scale agroecological approach to be most beneficial to both food production and biodiversity. Abandoning ineffective farmland NOT always the best outcome for biodiversity

Question 50

Certifications must be p—— in requirements to lead to positive conservation outcomes, i.e.:

Answer 50

Precise, coffee plantation shade requirements.

Question 51

Organic farming can increase b———- gains but also y—- gaps, thus not always making land-s——- the perfect outcome

Answer 51

Biodiversity, yield, sparing

Question 52

Give the 2 main reasons PAs can be described as insufficient

Answer 52

1. biodiversity declines continue
2. insufficient species representation in PA
   network

Question 53

“Effectiveness of the global protected area network in representing species diversity”

Do PAs cover species diversity effectively?

Answer 53

Does gap analysis on PAs using various datasets
PAs have insufficient coverage of biodiversity
12% of analysed species not represented by PAs, and of those which were, many were in relatively small PAs
Doesn’t even consider if PAs are suitable for these species covered - many are not
% PA area along insufficient for biodiversity targets, must account for biodiversity patterns too
PAs can be a very cost-effective strategy, at the moment they simple do not comprehensively cover the areas which they should

Question 54

even g— reserves measured to be d———– in atleast o– aspect of their h—–

Answer 54

good, declining, one, health

Question 55

l—- m—— populations have been found to be declining in protected areas in A——

Answer 55

large mammal, africa (by 59% in population abundance over course of study)

Question 56

“PAs that explicitly integrated local people as
stakeholders tended to be more effective at achieving
joint biological conservation and socioeconomic
development outcomes” - T/F

Answer 56

TRUEEE

Question 57

PAs under projected climate change could face considerable change in c——— s—— for IBAs, but the vast majority (90%) of species can RETAIN a c—— s—-

Answer 57

community structure, climate space

Question 58

what does PADDD stand for?

Answer 58

Protected area downgrading, downsizing and degazettement - growing on all counts across Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Carribbean